Read out the Vision Statement until it rolls off your tongue
It’s surprising how the pattern of reading something out, helps refine the written form of that content
I find crafting a great Vision Statement often seems to be more art than science.
Even though the core details for the Vision Statement are already in the Canvas, crafting the statement so it seems to flow takes practice.
Vision Statement Content
Let's take a second to reiterate where the content for the Vision Statement typically comes from:
The FOR, comes from the key persona
The WHO needs, comes from the Outcomes and Actions
The THE, comes from a combination of the Information Product Name and the key Delivery Type
The THAT, comes from a combination of the Business Questions, Feature Stories and Will/Wont’s
The UNLIKE, comes from asking the Stakeholder what they will do if this Information Product is not delivered.
Iterate, iterate, iterate
Taking all the content on the canvas and reducing it down to the key text that completes the Vision Statement takes a few iterations for every canvas I do.
The first iteration I do is I brain dump the text into each section without worrying about the length of the text or the flow.
In the second iteration I refine the text in each section so they resemble reasonable paragraphs in both length and structure.
The third iteration is refining the WHO and the THAT sections to make sure the WHO section clearly articulates the value of the Information Product (the why), and the THAT section clearly defines what the Information Product will deliver (the what). I do this iteration as I typically get the content of two sections mixed up.
Then read it out loud
Then the last iteration I will do is reading the entire Vision Statement out loud.
By reading it out loud I can identify where it doesn’t flow, or doesn’t sound right.
I will keep iterating the text, then read it out, until I am happy it flows.
Happy that it rolls off my tongue, so to speak.
It’s surprising how the pattern of reading something out, helps refine the written form of that content.